Posts tagged “AT&T”

It was 2007 and I was in class wiping drool off my computer desk. No, I hadn’t just roused from a sleepy stupor moon struck over Johnny Depp. The iPhone had been unveiled. Its lightweight construction, touch screen and revolutionary operating system had never been seen before. It had an iPod built in? This can’t be; I must still be dreaming. But I wasn’t. Fast forward a little bit…

I got one.

Then I suddenly became the Empress of the Universe. Yes, that was my official title. There wasn’t anything I couldn’t do. So, this feeling of empowerment persisted for the years to follow. I learned how to jailbreak the phone early on, crashing through the walls of containment Apple had put in place to display their dominance over the fan club of users that flock to the store year after year to pay hundreds of dollars for the next iPhone with a few new features that all the other smartphones have already been implementing for years….<insert breath here>

I’m still waiting on my commission and bonus checks for all the cellphone users I converted over to the happy, delusional, state of Apple.

I’ve been eligible for an upgrade through my carrier since July of this year. You may have guessed by now that I was holding out out for the newest and greatest iPhone yet…”The biggest thing to happen to iPhone since iPhone,” right Tim Cook? Yeah.

So the phone was unveiled, the frenzy was unleashed, I’m forever unimpressed…and now suddenly “un-empressed.”

So one week ago I did the unthinkable. I strolled into the AT&T store with a grimace on my face, trembling with fear and uncertainty, mumbling and stuttering the words “I’d like a G-g-galaxy S-s-s-3…p-p-please.”

Here are a couple of reasons why I continue to rationalize, justify and reconcile my decision to make the switch…

You know all those peripherals like, um, Bose docking stations, home theaters, items of the like? Yeah, they all came with built in connections to connect iPods and iPhones. Now that Apple has switched to the “Lightning” connector, NONE OF THOSE THINGS CONNECT. Unless, of course, you want to pay the $30 for an adapter and carry that around…which ironically, is about the same size as my iPod Nano, so I may as well carry that around in the event I want to listen to music on any of my other no-longer-Apple-friendly products. So, if there was ever a time to cross over to the dark side, it is now.

My chances of getting struck by lightning are greater than my chances of caving into buying Lightning adapters.

The screen? Still smaller than that of its main competitor, the Galaxy S3. Of course, Apple will have an answer for that, just like they blamed the iPhone 4 antenna problem on the way we held the phone to our faces. Why do we tolerate this degree of insolence and come back year after year to buy a new product from them? Where is our free will? I’ve been using my Galaxy S3 for about a week and there is NOTHING the iPhone does that it can’t do. In fact, I can do the same things with my S3 out of the box that I could do only with a jailbroken iPhone.

NFC? Stands for Near Field Communication, and I’ll never use it, but it’s the coolest option ever and iPhone users don’t have it. Ha.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I am no exception to being a creature of habit, and it has taken some adjusting, and I am far from a pro…and after iOS for umpteen years, there is a bit of a learning curve…but darn you Apple, you are not the greatest thing since sliced bread.

So now it comes down to the age-old question, “Is the grass really greener on the other side?” Well, if the grass is bigger, better, faster and less inhibiting, then yes. I rest my case. And thank you to my S3, I feel like an empress…again.